Boys: I have a song to sing, oh.
Girls: Sing me that song, oh.
Boys: It’s the song of the pie, and the greedy boy
Who sat in his lonely corner;
It’s the song of a boy with a greedy thumb,
Which he put in the pie to pull out a plum;
The little dog laughed when he saw such sport,
For he always laughed when he didn’t ought,
He never was at school, and never was taught,
A naughty boy, Jack Horner.
All: Heigh dey, heigh dey,
Heigh diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The little dog laughed when he saw the sport
Of the naughty boy, Jack Horner.

I think the teachers were a little doubtful about the grammar of “didn’t ought,” and candour compels me to admit that the song was not a success. Two schools sang it “to oblige the Inspector,” but on him, at least, it had the effect of a penitential psalm. I wrote no more.

Strange that there should be any difficulty in finding words of songs: “the world was all before them where to choose.” England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales contribute folk-songs of sufficient merit and variety, though, at times, of dialectic English. Germany is always at hand. But I admit that if you deduct in each case songs in praise of Bacchus, Diana, and Venus, there is a large gap.

CHAPTER XXV
NATURAL HISTORY

“His acquaintance with Natural History is surprising. Quite a Buffoon.”—Old Curiosity Shop.

In Public Elementary Schools the study of Natural History is still in its infancy. But there are signs of its assuming practical importance. In one school in the county in which I write, it has developed energy in a truly surprising manner. Our county paper recently informed us that the boys attending that place of learning had caught and killed an astonishing number of “worbles” in the past year; I think over 63,000.

This is a mere plagiarism from the methods of Dotheboys Hall. I turn to the chronicles thereof, and I read:

“Please, sir, he’s weeding the garden.”

“To be sure,” said Squeers, “so he is. B-O-T bot, T-I-N tin, bottin, N-E-Y ney, bottiney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. When he has learnt that bottinney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows ’em.”

What is a worble? That I know not: the worble-hunters were not in my district. Nor is the creature traceable in Miss Ormerod’s “Manual of Injurious Insects.”[39] I think it molests cattle, and therefore the farmers’ sons are keen to “take away that worble.” And as the school is in the middle of a great hunting district, the desire for the chase is instinctive.